Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — Attraction in Houston

Houston is a large metropolitan area loaded with attractions of many types. I have lived here more than a decade, but I still find new places to visit and I’ve decided to make it a point to cross more places off of my local bucket list before the end of the year. One of them is Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens.

This attraction is located in the River Oaks area and is part of the Houston Museum of Art. You purchase your tickets at a building on the main road, then walk or drive down to another section where you will find a pedestrian bridge that takes you to the garden and mansion. I recommend buying your tickets and then driving down to the overflow parking lot. This will place you right next to the bridge, ready to walk across and begin your visit.

Some people who visit here stick solely with the gardens and they are a sight to behold. There are several of them connected by a walkway, complete with manicured shrubs, colorful flowers, statues, fountains, and more. There are many photograph- worthy areas and those who visit will likely find many excellent opportunities to snap and share pics to social media.

Touring the mansion is a great idea too, particularly if you like art, antique furniture, and various historic knick- knacks. They have guided tours who will walk you from room to room, explaining the significance of each and how the Hogg family- the former occupants of the mansion- used the different rooms for entertainment and other purposes. Paintings and portraits can be found in most of the rooms, but the most impressive to me was the antique furniture. They just don’t design furniture like this anymore and as I walked room to room, I couldn’t help but imagine having some of these items in my own house and think about the conversations they would spark. They are works of art all by themselves.

Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens is a nice place to get away from the city and enjoy the natural beauty of the gardens while learning more about this era of Houston history. I recommend the 60 minute tour option and about an hour of walking around and enjoying the sights, sounds, and fragrances of the different gardens. It’s a cool place to soak up nature and history here in the Houston River Oaks...

This place is beautiful...I love it. Bayou Bend is such a wonderfully preserved cultural and historical attraction in Houston. This museum- home and gardens is maintained by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to preserve the legacy of it's founder, Miss Ima Hogg (1882-1975) who moved to Texas as a young child along with her siblings and parents after the Civil War and continued on to contribute greatly philanthropically and culturally in Houston. She loved Texas and had an affinity for exquisite living, culture, and collecting fine housewares and various Americana collectibles of which she always aspired to turn into a museum and she succeeded in doing so with Bayou Bend. The grounds are beautiful to walk through and admire with various gardens (best viewed during spring), sculptures and fountains, wooded ravines, and winding pathways. The museum (home) is fascinating to tour with its many parlors, suites, bedrooms, and specialty rooms dedicated to music, folkart, Texas decorative arts, etc. Various rooms throughout the museum-home are decorated to reflect seven periods of American decorative home styles; Late Renaissance, Early Baroque, Late Baroque, Chippendale, Neoclassical, Grecian, and Rococco Revival...some furniture pieces in the home are over 200 years old. Each room has a docent stationed in it to inform guests about the history of the room and period stylings on display. There are fees to tour the garden and home. I included a photo below of the fees posted in October of 2016; however, there is a completely free of charge family day that is offered at times, but the house tour is a partial tour on such days (does not include an upstairs tour). I don't recall any talk or tour of the kitchen...would have loved to have seen that! Guests must park in the lot and cross the very fun and bouncy suspension bridge to reach the property and admissions kiosk. Parking is free. If you are an enthusiast of architecture, design, art, antiques, and gardening, Bayou Bend is a must see. I just love it...such a wonderful treasure within Houston thanks to Miss Ima Hogg, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and all of the volunteers and staff who contribute(d) their time so we all can revel in the beauty...

If you’re interesting in stepping through a mansion furnished with the bells and whistles of the late 1700s to early 1900s, consider visiting the mansion at the Bayou Bend Collection at Gardens. If you’re only interesting in enjoying a still around their beautiful and quite spacious gardens, then there is an option to purchase a slightly cheaper ticket to see just that - about $19 to visit both mansion and gardens, $10 to visit just the gardens. We went on a Saturday afternoon and were pretty much on our own, on our self guided tour of the gardens. There is a QR code Which can be scanned at the ticketing entrance, Which directs to a website which has audio and transcript describing each Garden as well as each room within the mansion, as well as the significance of objects displayed in the rooms. Strolling through the Gardens, Even on a sunny hot summer afternoon, was quite pleasant, as the garden has plenty of tree cover. As soon as you step into the house for a tour/self guided tour, you’ll see that there are gallery attendants in almost each room, to guide visitors as well as ensure no damage is caused to objects within the rooms. The rooms’ set up is certainly intriguing. It was definitely a weird feeling stepping through a house entirely paid for by exacting fortunes based on the misfortune and enslavement of others (read up on the Hogg family and feel free to skip a tour of the house if what you read is more than just un-palatable to you). No doubt the property itself is worthy of 4 or 5 stars. However, given the times which the rooms are staged to reflect and the times we are in now, it was surprising that there was no mention of what life was like for whose toiled to make the riches of this property possible - be that on the oil fields or in the cotton...